Julia Langdon

{{short description|British journalist and writer (born 1946)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

Julia Mary Langdon (born July 1946) is a British journalist and writer.

A political journalist since 1971, she became a lobby correspondent in 1974.Julia Langdon [http://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/2258/the-lobbys-five-wise-monkeys.thtml "The lobby’s five wise monkeys"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717075716/http://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/2258/the-lobbys-five-wise-monkeys.thtml |date=2011-07-17 }}, Total Politics, 17 June 2009 Leaving The Guardian in 1984, she was appointed political editor of the Daily Mirror, the first woman to hold the position on a national newspaper in the UK.Martin Conboy Journalism: a Critical History, London: Sage, 2004, p. 147 Later, Langdon was political editor of The Sunday Telegraph.Julia Langdon [http://www.bjr.org.uk/data/2007/no1_langdon "Major voice, minor key"] {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120801041234/http://www.bjr.org.uk/data/2007/no1_langdon |date=2012-08-01 }}, British Journalism Review, 18:1, 2007, p. 13–21 Having children, however, was one of the reasons she left the parliamentary lobby in the 1990s.{{cite news|last=Merrick|first=Jane|url=https://life.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/confessions-of-a-female-lobby-correspondent/|title=Confessions of a female lobby correspondent|work=The Spectator|date=22 July 2016|accessdate=17 February 2017}}

Langdon has been a freelance writer since 1992, and has written a biography of the Labour politician Mo Mowlam (2000) and is writing a biography of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. She has also worked as a broadcaster for the BBC. She presented a programme on BBC Radio 4 about the recruitment of female spies, which featured an interview with Eliza Manningham-Buller former head of The Security Service. In the programme Langdon revealed that she had been approached at school to work for the secret services.{{Cite web | url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07j47py | title=BBC Radio 4 - I Work for the Government, and Let's Leave It at That }}